Certain embodiments of the present disclosure relate generally to railways, and in particular to maintenance of way with apparatuses and methods for railway tie plate retention to facilitate railway tie replacement.
With the hundreds of thousands of miles of railroad track traversing the United States alone, in addition to the great lengths throughout other countries of the world, maintenance of way is a tremendous and important effort. One aspect of maintenance of way is railway tie maintenance. Railway ties are typically made of wood or other materials that age and deteriorate over time due to railway use and environmental conditions. As a result, railway ties eventually require replacement. When a railway tie has been removed with a tie removal machine, certain railway elements, such as tie plates, are no longer supported.
Under current work practices, the tie plate either falls into a cavity left by the absence of the removed railway tie or is displaced to a shoulder of a ballast outside a rail. A worker must then retrieve the tie plate from the cavity or the shoulder by hand and set the tie plate aside in a proximate location. All new railway ties must have a tie plate placed on them in order to secure the rail properly. The tie plates are normally re-used with new railway ties. Later in the tie replacement process, a worker must pick up the tie plate and place it into position with correct orientation on an outside edge of an new railway tie to allow a machine to lift the rail and push the tie plate into proper position underneath the rail. This process is typically performed by two gangs of workers walking along a track and ballast shoulder to manually handle tie plates. One gang retrieves and places tie plates in a temporary, proximate location; another gang places tie plates into position on outside edges of new ties so they may be inserted under the rail by a different machine later in the process. The work window is often 8-12 hours long and typically includes 2,000-5,000 ties that are replaced per day.
Several issues are presented by the process, including issues redounding in inefficiencies and risks for personal injury. Significant time is devoted to the manual retrieval and handling of tie plates, especially when considered in the aggregate. Moreover, workers must traverse significant distances of uneven surfaces of a railway, even surfaces that are exacerbated by disturbed track where gaping holes are left when railway ties are removed, in between large railway tie removal and replacement machines. Workers often must step into the holes and/or bend low to retrieve tie plates from the holes. It is also not uncommon for workers to be forced to make their way down shoulders of the railway to retrieve tie plates that have been cast down the shoulders. These activities present risks for back injuries, knee injuries, ankle injuries, among others that occur with current work practices.
Thus, there is a need to solve these problems and provide for apparatuses and methods for railway tie plate retention. These and other needs are addressed by the present disclosure.